“The Great I Am”

Jeff Jacoby:

Obama, on the other hand, positively revels in The Great I Am.

“I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,’’ he told campaign aides when he was running for the White House. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that . . . I’m a better political director than my political director.’’

At the start of his presidency, Obama seemed to content himself with the royal “we’’ – “We will build the roads and bridges. . . . We will restore science to its rightful place. . . . We will harness the sun and winds,’’ he declaimed at his inauguration.

But as the literary theorist Stanley Fish points out, “By the time of the address to the Congress on Feb. 24, the royal we [had] flowered into the naked ‘I’: ‘As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress.’ ‘I called for action.’ ‘I pushed for quick action.’ ‘I have told each of my Cabinet.’ ‘I’ve appointed a proven and aggressive inspector general.’ ’I refuse to let that happen.’ ’’ In his speech on the federal takeover of General Motors, Obama likewise found it necessary to use the first-person singular pronoun 34 times. (“Congress’’ he mentioned just once.)

At this rate, it won’t be long before the president’s ego is so inflated that it will require a ZIP code of its own.

Rather a lot of us have been pointing out Obama’s oversized ego for quite some time. His narcissism pushes at the boundaries of pathology. He vilifies fellow Americans while bowing to foreign kings and emperors. He preaches bipartisanship while engaging in hyper-partisan politics at every turn. He lies regularly in what the press describes as wonderful, sonorous rhetoric (my youngest son describes his delivery as being “like that Star Trek guy” – meaning William Shatner’s portrayal of James T. Kirk).

The guy behind the curtain may be a legend in his own mind, but he’s looking more and more puny to people who are paying attention.